Editing Intentionality (section)

==Intentionalism<!--'Intentionalism (philosophy of mind)' redirect here-->==
<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA-->'''Intentionalism''' is the thesis that all mental states are intentional, i.e. that they are about something: about their intentional object.<ref name="Crane">{{cite book |last1=Crane |first1=Tim |title=The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Mind |publisher=Oxford: Oxford University Press |pages=474–93 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/CRAI-17 |chapter=Intentionalism |year=2009 |access-date=2020-11-10 |archive-date=2020-11-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201110111545/https://philpapers.org/rec/CRAI-17 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Siewert">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Siewert |first1=Charles |title=Consciousness and Intentionality |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-intentionality/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |date=2017}}</ref> This thesis has also been referred to as "representationalism".<ref name="Chalmers">{{cite book |last1=Chalmers |first1=David J. |title=The Future for Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=153–181 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/CHATRC |chapter=The Representational Character of Experience |year=2004 |access-date=2020-11-10 |archive-date=2020-11-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201110111543/https://philpapers.org/rec/CHATRC |url-status=live }}</ref> Intentionalism is entailed by Brentano's claim<ref>{{cite book |last1=Brentano |first1=Franz |title=Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint |year=1874 |publisher=Routledge |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/BREPFA |access-date=2020-11-10 |archive-date=2020-11-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201120033436/https://philpapers.org/rec/BREPFA |url-status=live }}</ref> that intentionality is "the mark of the mental": if all and only mental states are intentional then it is surely the case that all mental states are intentional.

Discussions of intentionalism often focus on the intentionality of conscious states. One can distinguish in such states their phenomenal features, or what it is like for a subject to have such a state, from their intentional features, or what they are about. These two features seem to be closely related to each other, which is why intentionalists have proposed various theories in order to capture the exact form of this relatedness.<ref name="Siewert"/><ref name="Chalmers"/>

===Forms of intentionalism===
These theories can roughly be divided into three categories: pure intentionalism, impure intentionalism, and qualia theories.<ref name="Crane" /> Both pure and impure intentionalism hold that there is a [[supervenience]] relation between phenomenal features and intentional features, for example, that two intentional states cannot differ regarding their phenomenal features without differing at the same time in their intentional features. Qualia theories, on the other hand, assert that among the phenomenal features of a mental state there are at least some non-intentional phenomenal properties, so-called "Qualia", which are not determined by intentional features. Pure and impure intentionalism disagree with each other concerning which intentional features are responsible for determining the phenomenal features. Pure intentionalists hold that only intentional content is responsible, while impure intentionalists assert that the manner or mode how this content is presented also plays a role.<ref name="Chalmers"/><ref name="Mitchell">{{cite journal |last1=Mitchell |first1=Jonathan |title=Another Look at Mode Intentionalism |journal=Erkenntnis |date=12 September 2020 |volume=87 |issue=6 |pages=2519–2546 |doi=10.1007/s10670-020-00314-4 |language=en |issn=1572-8420|doi-access=free |url=https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/144432/1/Mitchell2020_Article_AnotherLookAtModeIntentionalis.pdf }}</ref>

[[Tim Crane]], himself an impure intentionalist, explains this difference by distinguishing three aspects of intentional states: the intentional object, the intentional content, and the intentional mode.<ref name="Crane"/><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chediak |first1=Karla |title=Intentionalism and the Problem of the Object of Perception |journal=Trans/Form/Ação |date=2016 |volume=39 |issue=2 |pages=87–100 |doi=10.1590/S0101-31732016000200005 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/CHEIAT-5 |doi-access=free |access-date=2020-11-10 |archive-date=2020-11-17 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201117043450/https://philpapers.org/rec/CHEIAT-5 |url-status=live }}</ref> For example, seeing that an apple is round and tasting that this apple is sweet both have the same intentional object: the apple. But they involve different contents: the visual perception ascribes the property of roundness to the apple while the gustatory perception ascribes the property of sweetness to the apple. Touching the apple will also result in a perceptual experience ascribing roundness to the apple, but the roundness is presented in a different manner. So the visual perception and the haptic perception agree in both intentional object and intentional content but differ in intentional mode. Pure intentionalists may not agree with this distinction. They may argue, for example, that the difference in the last case also belongs to intentional content,<ref name="Chalmers"/> because two different properties are ascribed to the apple: seen-roundness and felt-roundness.<ref name="Mitchell"/>

===Mental states without intentionality <!--'Anti-intentionalism (philosophy of mind)' redirects here-->===
Critics of intentionalism, so-called <!--boldface per WP:R#PLA-->'''anti-intentionalists''',<ref name="Jacob">{{cite encyclopedia |last1=Jacob |first1=Pierre |title=Intentionality |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intentionality/ |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |date=2019}}</ref> have proposed various apparent counterexamples to intentionalism: states that are considered mental but lack intentionality.

Some anti-intentionalist theories, such as that of [[Ned Block]], are based on the argument that phenomenal conscious experience or [[qualia]] is also a vital component of consciousness, and that it is not intentional. (The latter claim is itself disputed by [[Michael Tye (philosopher)|Michael Tye]].)<ref>{{cite journal |author=Michael Tye |year=1995 |title=A Representational Theory of Pains and their Phenomenal Character |journal=Philosophical Perspectives |volume=9 |quote=[T]he phenomenal character of my pain intuitively is something that is given to me via introspection of what I experience in having the pain. But what I experience is what my experience represents. So, phenomenal character is representational. |pages=223–39 |url=http://philpapers.org/rec/TYEART |access-date=21 December 2012 |doi=10.2307/2214219 |jstor=2214219 |archive-date=21 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140421064754/http://philpapers.org/rec/TYEART |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Another form of anti-intentionalism [[John Searle#Intentionality and the background|associated with John Searle]] regards phenomenality itself, not intentionality, as the "mark of the mental" and thereby sidelines intentionality, since such anti-intentionalists "might accept the thesis that intentionality coincides with the mental, but they hold the view that intentionality derives from consciousness".<ref name="Jacob"/>

A further form argues that some unusual states of consciousness are non-intentional, although an individual might live a lifetime without experiencing them. [[Robert K.C. Forman]] argues that some of the unusual states of consciousness typical of [[mystical experience]] are ''pure consciousness events'' in which awareness exists, but has no object, is not awareness "of" anything.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Forman |first1=Robert Kc |title=The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=8 |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/FORIMC-2 |chapter=Introduction: Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting |year=1990 |access-date=2020-11-10 |archive-date=2020-11-10 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201110170156/https://philpapers.org/rec/FORIMC-2 |url-status=live }}</ref>